March 29: Conditional Good Wishes

On March 29, 1776, the legislature of Massachusetts appointed a Committee to greet Gen. George Washington.  On March 28, the two houses of the legislature composed an acknowledgement of Washington's public service and the evacuation of British forces from Boston on St. Patrick's Day (March 17, 1776).

The Massachusetts legislators wrote, "The Supreme Ruler of the Universe having smiled on our arms, and crowned your labours with remarkable success, we are now, without the effusion of blood we so much wished to avoid, again in the quiet possession of our capital."  The lawmakers added, "The wisdom and prudence of those movements which have obliged the enemy to abandon our Metropolis will ever be remembered by the inhabitants of this Colony."

In response, Washington wrote, "May that Being, who is powerful to save, and in whose hands is the fate of nations, look down with an eye of tender pity and compassion upon the whole of the United Colonies; may He continue to smile upon their councils and arms, and crown them with success whilst employed in the cause of virtue and of mankind...."

As he would throughout his public service, Washington offered good wishes with moral conditions.  Washington hoped that American plans and military efforts might have success only while "employed in the cause of virtue and mankind...."

March 28

Richard Smith wrote in his diary for March 28, 1776 that Thomas McKean "informed Congress that the Tory Prisoners in Philada. Goal [Jail] have attempted an Escape & have provided Implements and a Ladder to escape this Night whereupon Mr. McKean is to direct the Sheriff to confine Conolly, Smith and Kirkland seperately & get a sufficient Guard from the Barracks."  Paul H. Smith, et al., eds, Letters of Delegates to Congress: Vol. 3: January 1, 1776-May 15, 1776 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1978), 248-59.

Smith mentions the prisoners Dr. John Connolly, Moses Kirkland and John Smith.  In 1775, Smith hoped to recruit Native Americans to fight for the Loyalists against Americans opposed to Crown authority.  Walter Scott Dunn, Choosing Sides on the Frontier in the American Revolution (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2007), 81. 

March 27

Regarding Captain Peter Dundee, captured at St. Johns, Canada, General Philip Schuyler wrote to General George Washington on 27 March 1776, “The officers, (prisoners,) that came a few days ago from Canada, refused to give their parole, and one of them, a Captain Dundee, was very cavalier with me. I have ordered him into close custody. The others have since given their parole; but as some of them had dropped expressions, as if they should not consider a breach of it criminal, I convened them all, and informed them that if any of them attempted an escape after having given their parole, and I could lay hands on them, I should resent the injury done to mankind in general by hanging such faithless wretches.”

Many British officers believed they could violate an agreement with “rebels” (unlawful combatants). As New Jersey Governor William Livingston remarked in 1778, “Ever since the commencement of the present war, it hath been the cruel and perfidious policy of Britain to consider us as rebels, with whom engagements were not to be observed and whom she might treat with the utmost severity.”

Commercial Tyranny

On March 26, 1776, Elbridge Gerry, a Massachusetts Delegate to the Continental Congress, wrote to James Warren, President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, urging the Provincial Congress authorize the colony's delegates to vote for American independence from Great Britain. Gerry thought the publication of the instructions, with a list of grievances against British policy, would encourage "doubtful minds" in other colonies. In his pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine recommended the colonies issue such an enumeration of grievances in a declaration of independence.

Gerry remarked, "Is it not curious that the British Ministry should know so little of our feelings or character, that, after seizing our property, burning our towns, and destroying their inhabitants, they should make an act to interdict our trade, and suppose that Towns, Counties, and Colonies will bury in oblivion all former abuses, and subscribe themselves slaves, in order to be rescued from the severities of this this commercial tyranny?"

Read Gerry's letter in its entirety at the American Archives site of the Northern Illinois University Libraries.

Retaliation?

On March 25, 1776, Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull wrote wrote to Congressmen John Adams and George Wythe, "Burning and destroying our Towns...and cruel treatment of the persons so unhappy as to fall into their hands, are injuries of the first magnitude." Trumbull wrote, "The prisoners in our custody meet generous entertainment. Is it not time the law of retalliation should take place?" Robert Joseph Taylor, ed., Papers of John Adams: Vol. 4: February-August 1776 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 64.

Threats of retaliation figured in the unwritten laws of war in the late-1700s. Months later, Trumbull would get more accounts of cruel treatment and lethal neglect of American prisoners in British custody. Americans agonized over the option of retaliation. For the destruction of towns, please consult entries on Norfolk, Virginia and Falmouth, Massachusetts (currently Portland, Maine).